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If there is one rule for mac die-hards, it is do not buy any apple product in December or July. The reason why is simple: Apple makes big product announcements in August (at WWDC) and in January (at MacWorld). There are sometimes smaller announcements sprinkled throughout the year, but you gotta buy that new mac sometime, right? Gizmodo has created a nice calendar for those of you who can’t wait this year. The important dates: December 26th (you can still return and pay a 10% restocking fee) and December 30th (you can get the price difference without a fee if the price drops).

The story of dethroner is interesting. A professional blogger with lots of experience decides to create a little blog to earn just enough cash. Not to build out a multi-million-dollar-gawker-etc… but just enough to make a decent living. Three months in, here is how it is going…

As someone who was very involved in the second wave of virtual worlds on the internet (it depends if you count Habitat or MUDs as the first wave or not), I’ve watched them periodically come up and die again with amusement. It was always obvious the first time around, that it wasn’t a technology problem. Sure, Alphaworlds, Black Sun, Microsoft Virtual Worlds and V-Chat (my project) could have looked better or been slightly more responsive, but their main failings weren’t polygon counts. The main failings were all about having no reason to exist. none. They were novel, they were amusing for a short time, but they didn’t really bring much to the table that wasn’t there before. In the end it was just providing a new way of text chat. Adobe Atmosphere came out, gave me and the V-World’ers I know a laugh, and then died looking for a market.

Then came Linden Labs. Especially when the first details came out, I was really unimpressed. It seemed like a technology built by cyberhippies with nothing new to offer except some vague notions of on-line togetherness. I read some articles about it, and then ignored it, expecting it to go away soon. It persevered though and grew. They took their economy seriously and started selling real estate and making it possible for people to easily make a living within world (neither of these things was their idea, both have been done before). They started making large deals and announcing incredible usage (not profit) numbers. Of course, it is all a sham. The above article does a nice job skewering the Linden Labs numbers. Does this mean Second Life is a failure? Nope, even their (corrected) meager numbers are quite nice. Does this mean that Second Life is the first viable (long term) virtual world? Well, depends on if you want to count the on-line RPGs. Those were successful and have been around a lot longer. The question is if a purpose-less (non-game) virtual world can make it.

It is obviously just getting going (even Lark didn’t have a user comment yet), but I like that they have the local press reviews as well as people ones. Nicely organized, well arranged. We’ll see how they grow…

a message from Amazon about items in my shopping cart:
Please note that the price of The High Price of Materialism has increased from $10.85 to $11.32 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need has increased from $10.40 to $10.79 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture has increased from $10.20 to $10.65 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

So, I’m staying a nice hotel in the self-proclaimed capital of Silicon Valley. Of course, they have hot and cold running internet (wireless and wired!), but there is no outlet with 10 feet of the desk (where the wired internet is). Unless, of course, you move the bed away from the wall and unplug the clock.

Ya know, I’d like a Menorah in addition to XMas trees if they are going to be on public property too. I however think that suing the port “to make a point” during XMas season was a stupid move 10 times over. All it does it make all of us look petty and horrible. If it was a cross or a creche, something undeniably religious, I’d sign up on that suit myself…

Then again, the responses to the article also harken to my worst fears. The kind of stupidity on the other side “This is a Christian Nation” kinds of crap…